


a waking lightning flower

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Aulea Lives, Boss Fight, Canon-Typical Violence, Challenge Response, Gen, Ghost Companion, Inspired by Discord, Introspection, Magical Tattoos, Prologue, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Summoning, and is the equivalent of nobility in Galahd, defying fate and the gods, her son from the future no less
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 13:24:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16619777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: As always, there's a bloody and difficult price to pay for making sure that the peoples of her home islands can live in some kind of safety, or some faint idea of shelter.But the night tears at Aulea's heart, too, and she's going to need a little more than just help, if she wants to survive -- if she wants to choose to survive.





	a waking lightning flower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JunjouGrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JunjouGrey/gifts), [JeanTheBean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanTheBean/gifts), [notavodkashot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/gifts).



> Oh, hahaha, am I showing my Aulea stan colors? Sorry not sorry :D
> 
> This is part of a new AU I've been quietly cooking up, that's going to be a more canon-driven thing in the sense of -- three important characters don't die prematurely (or before the canon), and thus change the story because of their actions and their beliefs. (I may also be showing my Princess General Leia Organa stan colors, here.) All you need to know here is that Aulea, who becomes Noctis's mom, is from Galahd and has a lot of power in her blood. 
> 
> I wrote this for the November theme on one of my Discord servers, and the theme was: the women of FFXV.

_Wake up, please, wake up wake up wake up!_

Storm-lashed night. Tearing gnashing teeth of the wind. Only the faint flicker of purple light at her feet, wrapped around her in a ragged circle. The shivering glow of old words in an old script, which aren’t enough protection because there is no such thing, there cannot be any such thing. This she knows in her very blood and in her very bones. It’s the truth that she’s held and sheltered beneath her heart, in all the years of her life. 

Life is vicious, and life tastes like spilled blood and the harsh ashen salt-scent of the waves tearing at the shores of home. The shores of the islands in their ragged string -- the shores of the islands of Galahd -- Galahd that’s home, her home, the only home she’s ever known. Galahd of fragmented family groups, of feral packs of men and women and children, sharper than shattered steel and stubborn in their refusal to be forged anew into one nation. Galahd of storm-nights and tempest-days and vicious lives, for both those that were still actually alive, and those that were not.

How, how is it possible for a child’s voice to find her, haunting and clear in the storm that still pours all around, that still bites at her even within the scant shelter of the stone, this little bolthole of a cave that doesn’t even have enough space for her to lie full-length flat? A child’s voice, a living voice, high-pitched and frightened and uncertain and she’s still fighting the instinct to call out: to tell the child to run.

A child! And perhaps she knows young ones, little boys and little girls who weren’t quite old enough to enter into their families’ greater lives. Young ones who were still granted a little time to be no more than simply themselves, to play in the guarded clearings, to swim in the cleared coves for no real reason than to enjoy the precious fleeting hours of sunlight and sea-scented wind.

Maybe she’s trying to escape the reality that has to be coming for her, because she’s out here in the wilds, because she’s out here alone in the perilous shelter of this storm-lashed haven -- and she’s thinking of the young ones. 

Nyx, clever and feral, with a bright strange charm twinkling in the corners of his eyes.

Libertus, steadfast and calculating, and his broad shoulders always ready to shake with hearty laughter.

Crowe, fierce and relentless, graceful hands poised to fight and to help, in the exact same instant.

Ink already wrapped around their wrists, and those dark lines, none of them fresh, meant many things.

The ink also meant that none of them could have called out to her with that voice. The pitch of it, the fear, these are things that mark the owner of the voice to be so much younger than the three of them and all of their peers -- the owner of the voice can’t even be old enough to begin any kind of lessons in the family groups.

And then there’s her last impression: for all of its fear, for all of its tremors, for all of its shaking, how can that young voice carry so much potential, so much untapped strength? 

Strong like a storm of light, strong like an unexpected glimpse of stars scattered in a clear sky, strong like swords flashing and glittering -- and her own grip tightens on one of her swords, the fine blades that she carries with her at all times. 

With gritted teeth she draws the other sword, too.

Movement! There’s the shadow, there’s her predator, there’s her prey: it’s stalking towards her, spikes and sharp edges that make her mind recoil -- there’s everything wrong about it, she can’t even think that it resembles something alive or familiar, it just can’t make sense to her -- it’s heading straight for her and -- she has to wait. 

Has to force herself to wait: because there’s been a point to all of this all along, and she hasn’t been turned out into the scarred and shattered world for no reason. She hasn’t been staked out helpless and useless and fearful. 

Ravaged and ravenous and dripping with hatred and jet-black fury: the beast is her predator, and the beast is her prey. 

There’s a tiny village down the coast, and its elders have placed a bounty on this creature’s head, or else they’ll starve and it will gut itself on their hungry bodies.

She doesn’t need the bounty; she needs this creature to die.

And the voice speaks to her once more, the very sound of it changing in the span of a single brief word: _Wait._

The word begins in a boy’s high pitch and ends on the quiet resolve of a young man’s. 

Just the sound, though: nothing else about it changes, and the voice does make her smile. It does make her think of stray warmth, that curls gentle and content in the back of her mind, and the corner of her mouth hurts, but she doesn’t stop smiling.

Not even when the beast finally roars -- louder than the thunder, louder than the storm, louder than the panicked flutter of her own heart -- and in the wake of that twisted sickening cry, or perhaps because of it, she hears the rock beneath her feet give -- the walls of the cave are coming for her, collapsing into dust, and she leaps outwards, catching her breath -- she breaches the purple light that was sheltering her and rolls forward, blades glinting and flashing as she goes for her enemy’s legs -- 

Again and again she guesses, and she slashes. Again and again she tries to cut her way through, and every time she almost makes it she screams out her frustrations, her rage. 

Perhaps this creature can be hurt in certain ways, even if it’s no longer alive -- perhaps if she cuts at its muscles, at the sinews that still by rights ought to be keeping its limbs together, she can hurt it, and keep on hurting it. Enough to leave it injured, vulnerable, bleeding all over the place although she keeps dancing wide-eyed and frightened from the splatter of the black steaming liquid -- every time it falls onto the fallow churn of the mud beneath her feet the rocks hiss as if in protest, rancid smell of its drying making her recoil.

The earth itself almost flows beneath her feet, sluggish and slowing and catching at her, clawing for her -- impossible to tell if the land itself is fighting her, too, or if it’s just protesting the evil that walks upon it. The evil of this beast, its terrifying golden eyes and the teeth that are longer than her arms, than her swords -- again and again she swings and again and again the beast clashes its teeth against her steel, as effective as parries, and even more fearful.

And again and again she thinks she almost catches sight of the scratches and the scars lacing the beast’s hide.

Too many markings --

Horror strikes her then, even as she swings both swords into a faltering parry, whiplash-weak, in the midst of the pain in her arms and her elbows and her shoulders, the growing numbness of the night penetrating into her skin and bones -- those golden eyes, leering, far too close, and she hisses and tries to kick away, and nearly screams as the dripping black blood bounces from the stones and the rock beneath her, the disgusting flight that nearly falls onto her exposed hands.

Too many markings and too little damage.

It’s getting harder and harder to think -- but she makes herself do it even as she makes herself roll away, clumsy dodge and then only the scream of the tension in her body, releasing, gives her the strength to run towards another outcropping of rock.

She has to rest, she has to catch her breath, she can’t even remember how many times she’s tried to strike out at the beast. How many times has she connected? And, more important, more frightening -- how many times has she missed?

Oh, how the young ones would stare at her, and none of them kindly. She teaches some of the weapons classes, to youths with their skin newly smarting from the bite of the ink and the needles. To boys and girls healing from new scars, the spoils of their first journeys into the wilder hearts of the islands, into the feral claw-scored forests and the fields lying fallow and long since abandoned. The broken walls, the fallen houses, the blind windows.

If they could see her now -- if Nyx and Libertus and Crowe could see her now, thrown down to her knees and her guts heaving with shame and sickness -- would they laugh? Would they hide here with her? Would they fly at their enemy with renewed energy for the attack?

She puts her head down between her knees and breathes. Breathes. Tries to find the center, as she teaches them. To find the very heart of her and the source of her strength. The source of her courage.

Too many scars on the beast, and yet it still stands, and -- what is she doing except adding to those meaningless lines? What is she doing but striping it, welting it? 

What purpose can such small injuries serve except to -- madden the beast further? To bring her own death that much closer --

“No,” and this time she speaks. Small though her voice might be in the middle of this choking night, this fearful storm -- she still has the power to make herself heard.

She can still learn something from this.

She puts her swords back in their scabbards.

If she can’t rely on these weapons -- then what can she rely on?

When did she close her eyes, she thinks, as she opens them and the first thing she sees is -- the very same place she’s left behind, in the beginning of all of this.

The haven is still there, the inscribed curve of it still sheltering the caved-in tunnel into the rocks. 

Purple pulse of light in lines and shapes made with purpose: the pulse that beats slowly but steadily, though the lightning still streaking overhead far overshadows it in brilliance. Words that can still be used even if she can’t understand them.

No one on the islands can: and she’s tried to find every scholar and every priestess and every venerable, and none of them have even managed to agree on what the words might have been used for -- all they can agree on is that the words must have been used for something.

She doesn’t have any idea of that, either -- and before she can even try to think again, the beast screams -- the ground and the rocks shake violently around her -- 

_Go!_

The boy’s voice!

“Going,” she says, and doesn’t know why she answers, and there’s nowhere for her to go, nowhere that’s safe unless she wants to turn and hurl herself straight into her opponent’s teeth, and she reaches the haven only half a heartbeat before everything vanishes beneath sword-scars and dripping black blood.

Some of which falls onto the line of light beneath her foot -- and the light flares, enough that she almost screams with shock.

Her shock is nearly drowned out by the beast’s shaken cry.

And she’s never heard anything like a sound of fear out of this -- deranged creature, this monstrous thing.

_Ask for help._

Movement, a shadow forming near her -- no, not a shadow, but a shape in light -- an arm reaching out toward her, a hand wrapped in crackling bolts.

Bolts of power, bolts of lightning, and -- “No, not him, never the one who betrayed us,” Aulea mutters, and she almost wants to shake her head. 

_Ask for help -- please!_

“And who can help me, who is there to hear,” she says, and -- there’s a force rising up in her, there’s a quiet gentle command surging through the thoughts that are clamoring reckless and useless in the back of her head and -- she opens her hands.

Lays them, palms down, into the line of purple light before her -- and only then does she notice the indentations, the spaces that might be a little too large for her hands to fit into -- they really do feel like shapes worn into the rock, into the soil, by many pairs that have been placed there before hers -- 

Words falling into her head: not because she can hear the little boy’s voice but because she’s remembering the voices of the venerables as they fell into their trances, as they became completely absorbed into their rituals, and their words become hers, with the weight of -- something very much like familiarity.

Like she’s heard someone say these words for her or with her or over her or -- 

As she speaks she could almost think that the beast stops and sneers -- stops to _listen_ \-- and she almost laughs because those golden eyes widen, and then narrow -- but before she can say or do anything else the words grow in power, in volume, and she knows she’s shouting into the storm, now. She can feel the weight of the words, pressing down into her -- not to hurt, not to pull at her -- pressing into her more and more firmly, and at the last moment she screams -- throws her head back -- stinging pelting rain falling into her wide-open eyes and that’s when she sees it.

The lightning frozen into a vast fan, that seems to span the entire dark sky overhead. Spokes of radiant light, and the powerful breathless weight of power, of waiting, like gathering -- 

Aulea hears herself shout: “O Stormfather! O Lightning-bearer! O Fulgurian!”

_Old man! Come on!_

The boy’s voice and the powerful note of laughter woven into those two words, irreverent, playful, and -- she sees.

Sees the kindly weathered face, the eternal frown, the streaming sleeves, the raised staff. Stars in depthless eyes, purple light, the entire strength of this storm finally flowing into a form she can recognize.

“Ramuh,” she says, and her own small voice is once again lost in the redoubled roar of the rain. That massive form, looming from on high, in the stopped fury of the storm.

 **Scion,** Ramuh seems to say. **Scion. Heir. Your destiny is placed before you and there are as many forks in the path as there are raindrops in this storm. Your destiny is placed before you and this is your moment of choosing.**

“Choose -- what are you asking me to choose? Why do I have to choose now?” she screams, and that worn ancient face frowns and she doesn’t let it frighten her. 

An Astral looking down on her with something very like the beginnings of disapproval is still less frightening than the beast, snarling on the very edges of the haven-light, too close by far.

“I don’t know anything, I don’t have any choice, I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention but I’m about to get eaten by darkness here, and you can’t call me a scion or an heir if I’ve got evil flowing in my veins! So kindly help me out here or leave me alone to die, that’s all the choice there is right now!”

 **Choose. Choose,** Ramuh seems to say, and the word repeats, repeats, turns into the shriek of the thunder, the roar of the rain.

_Please!_

The boy.

Now Aulea can actually see him: has he been there all along, or has he finally found the strength or the ability to show himself? The rain doesn’t touch him at all. Does that make him the same as the beast? Is he her enemy, too, despite the way he’s been cheering her on?

Does that matter? She can’t recognize him. She’s never seen anyone who might even resemble him. There’s something uneven about the way he stands, like one side of his body is heavier than the other, or like he’s carrying some kind of hurt and the only way to make it better is his lopsided posture. She’s seen it in the elders, she’s seen it in some of the priestesses. 

That’s not what worries her.

What she sees most clearly are the lines of pain in a face so young, in a face so full of worry. Black hair so dark it’s almost bluish, lifting off his forehead, nearly waving in the lightning frozen overhead. The faint tiny smudge in his pale face, something very much like a beauty mark above his mouth. It hangs low on his right cheek, almost in line with his right eye.

His eyes.

Eyes as blue as her own, the blue of the ocean on the rarest nights in her corner of Galahd. The blue of the sea in the darkest shadow of the waning moon, when the tides were calmest, when the waves shed their foam-tipped crests, moving only softly and gently.

“Who are you,” Aulea mutters.

The boy only shakes his head, and looks away: looks back towards the sky and towards the face of the Fulgurian.

So she follows, and she chooses.

“Let me live! Let me find my way -- I’ll make it if I have to, but let me live to find it!”

 **So be it --**

And the storm doesn’t shriek above her, not even as all the lightning bolts in the sky suddenly fly together, as if drawn into one single blazing line of light that -- streaks into her, even as she watches, even as she can’t even catch her breath --

The boy grins, and holds out a hand to her, again.

Like he’s been pulling at her, like he’s strong enough to raise her, Aulea finds herself propelled to her feet.

And she doesn’t even get the chance to brace herself for the lightning that pulses through her -- she’s expecting to be burned and to be scoured away, to be shattered into a thousand different pieces -- but the power of the Fulgurian wraps warmth around her instead. Calms the heaving of her gut and the thoughts in her mind, and the next time she takes a breath -- she can’t even smell the stench of the beast as it rears up onto its hind feet and then seems to back off -- 

She knows, she knows it’s going to try to charge the haven, and she doesn’t feel afraid of it any more.

She knows what she needs to do with the lightning that’s still shivering gently within her. Crackling light in the palms of her hands -- that she raises toward the beast.

“Come on then,” she murmurs.

Scream that shakes everything around her except for her haven, her purple-light line in the earth, and she smiles and doesn’t move, doesn’t waver, doesn’t turn away as the beast rushes for her and she simply releases the lightning, in the very instant before it manages to overrun the lines of her shelter.

Lightning that spreads into the cracks all along its dark sludge, its dark skin, its golden eyes -- and the beast opens its mouth to scream again -- instead there’s more light flowing out of it, purple and warm, torching it finer than ashes, finer than dust, scoured out of the world in a soundless blast of light.

Aulea falls, hard, to her knees.

It doesn’t hurt at all.

But that might be because she’s staring at her hands.

Like a network of inked lines, like an intricate lace that’s been hammered straight into her skin, joining the other marks that she’s received, that she’s won: but no needles could have created the precise fine symmetries of lightning bolts, imprinted in wide bracelets at the base of her palms.

**Scion, you have chosen a path of power. Of great decisions. It will hurt. I have no doubt you will rise to the challenge.**

Ramuh vanishes -- and miraculously, the skies almost clear in his wake.

 _See you,_ the boy says, before he, too, seems to flow away, to skip away, in the calm and rising whisper of a clean breeze.

The boy’s eyes. The power of the Fulgurian.

Her choice: what choice has she made, she wonders -- 

And the haven lights up around her, soothing, and -- she feels the pain and the weariness wash away, too, in the pulse of the world around her.

Scent of electrified water and air that lingers on her skin, on her swords, even after she’s made her way back to the village, even as she makes her way home.

That’s going to take some explaining -- not to her family, they’re not there, they haven’t been there for a long time.

She just wonders what the young ones will make of her encounter.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/) \-- I'm gonna be around for quite a while yet!


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